Olga Grlic, Designing I Do Not Trust You
Olga Grlic is the Creative Director for Wednesday Books & St. Martin's Press Paperbacks, and an Executive Art Director for St. Martin's Press. Here she talks us through her process for designing the cover of Laura J. Burns’s and Melinda Metz’s I Do Not Trust You.
I Do Not Trust You was originally called The Lost Map of Chaos and is a teen thriller with lots of adventure and mystery, for my new imprint Wednesday Books. There was no direction given when it was launched and I knew I wanted it type and texture only and not photographic.
I began my maternity leave and needed to send out this very last book but then realized I had a very specific idea of what I wanted it to look like, so instead of sketching it out I downloaded a snake and some leaves from Shutterstock and just put it together in less than half an hour for this flat but layered look with a hand-written title.
Original cover concept
I sent it around and it was approved, so I went to the hospital and had my child.
Its funny that out of so many covers I’ve done Spine asked about I Do Not Trust You, as it’s the absolute simplest process of all the covers I’ve done and a VERY rare one comp job that will basically never happen again!
Final cover
Editor, artworker and lifelong bibliophile.